Each Peach Pear Plum: Janet and Allan Ahlberg

Each Peach Pear Plum was a recent gift to Baby Bookworm. She mainly wants to eat it, but I'm quite enjoying it. It's a deceptively simple book with a subversive slant. Each page spread has a rhyming couplet on one side, and a detailed picture on the other. The couplets all end with "I spy ...", and the idea is to spy the named character in the picture. So we have:

"Cinderella on the stairsI spy the Three Bears"

And the Three Bears can be seen peeking in through a window, as Cinderella dusts.

The humor comes partly in the language:

"Mother Hubbard down the cellarI spy Cinderella"

[That one cracks me up for some reason.]

But most of the humor is in the illustrations. When Jack and Jill are spied, all we see are their legs waving in the air, half-way down the hill. And then we find them in a ditch on the next page. If that doesn't make preschoolers giggle, I don't know what will. I did have a moment of fear when the Three Bears, out hunting, find the lost and helpless Baby Bunting. [Just how far will the black humor go?] But it all turns out ok.

Seriously, though, this is a very fun book to read with preschoolers. Although it's a board book with limited text, it's a bit above the interest level of babies. You'll want to share this with kids who are old enough to enjoy scouring the pictures, to find Tom Thumb and the rest. This is an excellent addition to any collection. The illustrations are wonderful, too.

Comments

Each Peach Pear Plum was a recent gift to Baby Bookworm. She mainly wants to eat it, but I'm quite enjoying it. It's a deceptively simple book with a subversive slant. Each page spread has a rhyming couplet on one side, and a detailed picture on the other. The couplets all end with "I spy ...", and the idea is to spy the named character in the picture. So we have:

"Cinderella on the stairsI spy the Three Bears"

And the Three Bears can be seen peeking in through a window, as Cinderella dusts.

The humor comes partly in the language:

"Mother Hubbard down the cellarI spy Cinderella"

[That one cracks me up for some reason.]

But most of the humor is in the illustrations. When Jack and Jill are spied, all we see are their legs waving in the air, half-way down the hill. And then we find them in a ditch on the next page. If that doesn't make preschoolers giggle, I don't know what will. I did have a moment of fear when the Three Bears, out hunting, find the lost and helpless Baby Bunting. [Just how far will the black humor go?] But it all turns out ok.

Seriously, though, this is a very fun book to read with preschoolers. Although it's a board book with limited text, it's a bit above the interest level of babies. You'll want to share this with kids who are old enough to enjoy scouring the pictures, to find Tom Thumb and the rest. This is an excellent addition to any collection. The illustrations are wonderful, too.

See Other Kid Lit Reviews

Receive daily emails of new content

Copyright Notice

All posts on this site are (c) 2006-2015 by Jennifer Robinson. All rights reserved. I also specifically reserve the right to delete comments made on this blog for any reason, particularly if they contain blatantly commercial or offensive language, and/or do not contribute to the discussion at hand. I reserve the right to delete promotional material included within the text of comments.